There are many tools and strategies that I am excited to implement within my classroom. They include the sticky note brainstorm strategy, doing a nature/campus walk to observe and write down phenomena, seeing the NGSS as 3 dimensions of what the student can think, know, and do, and also the 5E lesson planning template tool.

I think that I have changed how I think about how NGSS can be integrated with the other standards I need to teach as well as my intertopical units.

I really shifted to phenomenon based instruction and I’ve been doing this in my instruction. I’ve also gained some understanding of how to navigate the NGSS.

I applied the questions to Social Sciences and the answers reflect situations as they may arise in that discipline. I plan to introduce phenomena as the basis for many of my lessons and open the class to debate and discussion.

A key takeaway was the importance of providing opportunities for all students to think about and talk about their observations and thoughts, in ways that take into account multiple intelligences and different learning styles.

Having students generate questions about a phenomenon is such a good way of including every student, every experience, and every culture in science. Any student can be a scientist and can make references to other material they are learning in school or to past experiences due to the many cross-cutting concepts implemented through NGSS.

One key take-away for me was that our perceptions and biases have a huge impact in how we teach, even if we are unaware of them.

Some things I am working on is to listen more carefully to students (and teachers) to hopefully become more empathetic and to slow down my reaction/response time, just a fraction, as a check on my own biases.

I loved the techniques for structuring NGSS (3D, 5E, CER). NGSS was feeling really open-ended but it now feels like I have a better understanding of how to plan both short and long term.